


The Sun That Breaks the Storm

by city_bright



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-08-19 15:56:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20212387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/city_bright/pseuds/city_bright
Summary: Danny's POV during Josh & Mindy's Christmas Party and a little exploration of what happened after the party.





	The Sun That Breaks the Storm

He looks down at the gingerbread house in his hands, and he’s almost certain she’s going to like it. She might tease him for it and call him an old man or something, but he thinks she’ll be impressed, so if he has to take a couple of jokes, then so be it.

He turns the corner to her apartment, and he can hear her distinct lilt over the lively music. He spots her immediately, and it’s like she has a sixth sense about him and knew he was coming because she turns around just in time to see him approach. She gasps at his creation, and the long hours he spent perfecting it suddenly seem worth it. She says she loves it, and he makes it a point to say he made it himself because maybe if she loves the house, she may start to like him a little bit too, but whatever, it’s a stupid thought anyway. He walks past her to set the house on her kitchen island and says he needs to go. It was a mistake to come here.

But she protests and insists he stay for a drink. Her hand is on his arm, and he can feel the warmth of her hand, even through the thickness of his leather jacket, and he agrees. He seems to agree to a lot of her requests lately. He wonders when it started to get harder and harder to say no to her or if he’s being honest when she started to matter to him. But he’s not here to be honest, and he hopes there’s hard liquor at this party.

He hears some guy over the party, and Mindy begins to introduce him as her boyfriend, and he actively chooses to focus on his gingerbread house, picking at it and inspecting it to make sure the royal icing is still set and the gumdrops are securely in place. He provides an insider secret to the structural integrity of his gingerbread house, but no one is listening or even paying attention because _oh, everyone’s looking at some guy._

He tosses his jacket on the pile of other jackets on her bed and uses the privacy of the room to solidify his plans with one of his most trusted friend with benefits, but minor emphasis on the friend. She comes into town only a few of times a year, but they can always count on each other to end the evening somewhere horizontal. Plans securely in place, he returns to the party in search of alcohol.

He pours himself a glass of bourbon, and he downs it fairly quickly as Mindy continues to parade _Joseph?_, he’s not sure, around the party. He purposefully avoids the route, and he has an hour before he really has to go, but not even alcohol can save him from this misery. He’s antsy, so he returns to her room to find his jacket and get out of here. She saunters in, a wine glass in hand, and asks if he’s leaving already. He doesn’t even look at her when he tells her he has plans. Her interest is peaked, but of course it would be, he’s not surprised.

_You’re not the only one dating somebody,_ he quips, hoping it’ll be enough to satisfy her curiosity. He isn’t really dating anybody, but she doesn’t need to know that. She seems genuinely interested, and that somehow makes him feel worse than if she had been indifferent to it. But she’s beaming up at him now, and her hand is covering his to stop his motions of finding his jacket, and the instinct to upturn his hand to wrap it around hers is strong. He leans away and sits atop the dresser across her bed to create some distance.

She hasn’t stopped smiling since she walked in. This is probably the longest she has ever shown positive emotions towards him, and it’s disarming, but it’s okay, he’s willing to play into it. He smirks and tells her that his date is nothing like him, and she says she sounds cool as if he isn’t, and he defensively crosses his arms. But he can’t even be that mad because she’s thanking him for coming, and he can live with the fact that he made her a little bit happy tonight with his gingerbread house and his attendance.

But then her whole life comes crashing down in 20 seconds, and he wishes he could take it all away from her. He knows how it feels to be cheated on, and it’s the ultimate betrayal. You reveal little pockets of yourself to someone, and you let someone in, and then they turn around to throw it all back in your face. He remembers that gut-wrenching feeling so clearly, and he wants to protect her from it, grabbing the phone out of her hand to stop her from replaying the message.

At the end of it all, she retreats to her room, tears streaming down her face, and his heart breaks for her. He’s compelled to keep her company, be there for her in the way he wishes someone was there for him years ago, so he enters her room and sits at the edge of her bed. He tries to keep it light and make her laugh, but she’s not rising to the bait like she normally would. She’s heartbroken and calls herself a loser that no one will ever love, and he doesn’t know what to do. He has always known Mindy to be confident, and seeing her anything but is completely unknown territory for him. Mindy understanding that she’s worthy and deserving of the love she dreams of is now of utmost importance to him.

_I know you’re gonna meet some guy, and whoever that guy is, he’s not getting a terrible deal out of it._

She wants to make a pact. Yikes. He knows where this is going, based on his knowledge of tv shows and movies. It’s limited, but he’s not that dense. She’s going to ask him to marry her in 5 years, and while he kind of dreads the idea, he actually wouldn’t mind. He likes her more than most people, so at least there’s that. He takes a deep breath and waits for the inevitable, but it never comes because she suggests a pact of the murder-suicide variety. Not exactly what he expected, he must admit, but it sounds about right coming from the woman who errs on the side of dramatic. He extends his hand to shake on it and accepts. _Absolutely_.

She wipes away the last of her tears and actually offers him a small smile, which makes his own lips twitch upwards too. He manages to convince her to return to the party, where Last Christmas is playing, and he thinks that this was, maybe, possibly, not the worst Christmas party he’s ever been to. He even forgot about his abandoned plans because Jeremy is rebuilding his gingerbread house, and Mindy is motioning him over to dance with her, and how could he resist?

She takes his hand, and he spins her around slowly, careful not to knock the drink in her hand. They’re stepping along to the beat, and he steadies her with a hand to her waist because her coordination isn’t great on a good day, but with a few drinks in her, it’s pretty bad. But he’s enjoying this far more than he thought he would because she’s laughing again, and that somehow feels enough. She pulls away, her attention focused now on a search for another glass of champagne, and it would normally worry him - her drinking a lot - but she’s had a difficult night. He remembers the many nights he turned to the bottle to cope with Christina cheating on him, so he gets it.

He hides away in the kitchen, picking at his gingerbread house and feeling a little more than melancholy and lonely tonight as Mindy dances away, seemingly losing interest in him. He tries not to take it personally because it isn’t personal. They don’t have a personal relationship. He’s not even sure they’re friends. She’s just… being Mindy. Mindy Lahiri, who easily manages to have everyone love her and be the life of the party. Mindy Lahiri, who is always so willing and adept to change in a way that makes him feel envious and frightened at the same time. Mindy Lahiri, who has the intensity of a thousand suns. Mindy Lahiri.

If he wasn’t convinced that she has a sixth sense for him earlier in the evening, he is now because she catches his eyes and beams at him the same way she did when they were alone in her bedroom, and he immediately looks away, as if she can somehow read his mind through his eyes. She settles into a chair at the island and puts her hand over his. Her hand is soft and warmer than usual, likely from the alcohol, and it’s distracting enough for him to miss almost the entirety of whatever she was saying. Something about having fun.

He shrugs. _I’m not, not having fun._ She wrinkles her nose at him, but accepts and returns to the party with a refreshed glass of champagne. Slowly, but surely, the party begins to quiet down, and there’s only a handful of people left. She’s stumbling a little bit, her speech is slurred, eyes glassy as ever, and her voice is becoming groggy. He starts to clean up the best he can, so she doesn’t have to do it later. Jeremy and Betsy offer to help, but he insists they head home, and it’s just her and him now.

Mindy drags her bare feet across the wooden floors to slump half her torso across the kitchen island, barely sitting on the barstool. She groans, presumably because the alcohol is fading fast and tonight’s events are hitting her like a train wreck. She tells him to go home, but he insists that he stay to help clean up, the glass clink of a beer bottle going into the trash emphasizing his point. _But your date with cool female you,_ she croaks, snorting at her joke from earlier in the night. But the snort quickly turns into a dry heave, and she immediately bolts to the bathroom to empty the contents of her stomach.

He follows closely behind her, and her hair is lining the rim of the toilet bowl, so he pulls it back into a low ponytail to get it out of her face. He sighs because damn it, it’s as soft as he had expected. He makes a joke about how that’s the fastest he’s ever seen her run as he rubs a hand up and down her back. She gives him a death stare for it, and he can’t hold back the smirk growing on his face because her eyeliner is a little bit smudged, and her eyes are cloudy and full of fire, and yet she looks absolutely devastating.

She catches his smirk and whines at him, demanding to know why he’s laughing at her while she’s miserable, and his smile is growing by the second. _I’m not laughing at you! You’re just- _Adorable. Beautiful. Somehow glowing. Terrifyingly easy to love. He sighs. _Nothing_.

The smile is still lingering on his face as he wipes away a few dots of liquid around her chin with a sheet of toilet paper. He prays that she doesn’t read into this and may even possibly be drunk enough to forget this tomorrow morning because he can already feel his heart restricting at the thought of her knowing he may like her more than he lets on. She smiles weakly at him and mutters a thanks before dipping her face back in the bowl to throw up again. 

He stands and goes into the kitchen to get her some water, and when he returns, she’s slumped against the wall. He hands her the glass of water, which she dutifully takes into her hand and drinks, and takes a seat next to her. He dares to look over at the woman who has perplexed him since the day they met, and he can’t remember a time when he’s ever seen her like this. It wasn’t even this bad when Tom dumped her for the Serbian bagel girl. He replays tonight’s events in his head, and he fucking hates Josh. Son of a bitch didn’t deserve her, and she doesn’t deserve this. _‘m sorry._

She hums a somewhat happy-sounding response, and they sit in silence for about a minute until he hears her softly snoring. He cranes his neck towards her, and yep, she’s asleep. He gently nudges her awake and calls her name. The frog in his throat catches him by surprise, much like every warm, positive feeling he's been feeling about her recently, and he quietly clears his throat. He wakes her with encouraging promises of a soft, warm bed, and she stands with wobbly conviction and claims she’s as sober as a dead horse. He tilts his head and looks at her a little sideways. Should he know what that means?

Clearly, he didn’t do a good job hiding his suspicions because she’s continuing this one-sided fight for sobriety, and he can see her focusing her eyes as best she can to prove him wrong, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop yet another smile from forming. He really needs to pull it together and get a fucking grip. He wraps an arm around her waist to steady her as they walk back to her room, and she leans into him, her arguments quickly falling on her lips.

She leaves his side as they reach the edge of her bed, and the lack of her warmth is a cold reminder that he is still very much single and alone. It sobers him up quickly, even though he’s nowhere near as drunk as he would like to be. She drops face-first into her crisp white comforter, humming happily at its softness. He drapes her bird print comforter more securely over her and retrieves the glass of water to place on her nightstand, bringing over a nearby trash can to the side of her bed as well, in case another wave of nausea hits her during the night. He can hear the soft huffs of her even breathing, a clear indicator that his presence and services are no longer required. He places his hands on his hips, thinking he should probably go now, but he can’t seem to walk away. The need to stay with her is new and unrelenting, but if he doesn’t leave now, he never will, and that would make for an awkward situation in the morning. 

He takes in one last look at her and turns away to leave, closing the door behind him. He lets out a sigh and rolls his shoulders when he steps out into the chilly night, trying to pretend the newly discovered revelations about her were a figment of his imagination and begins the trek home. He pulls out a single cigarette he keeps in his jacket for emergency situations such as this one and lights it, breathing in the familiar concoction of nicotine and tar. Maybe he’ll take up a few more overnight shifts at the hospital to reset himself. That’ll do it, he thinks as he purses his lips and exhales to release the smoke. Maybe. Probably not.


End file.
